Milwaukee's Soldiers Home named to national list of endangered places

By Mary Louise Schumacher of the Journal Sentinel

Published on: 6/15/2011

A lifeline and refuge for veterans who’ve served in every American conflict since the Civil War, Milwaukee’s National Soldiers Home represents one of the nation’s first commitments to give the men and women in the U.S. armed services the benefits they deserve.

But this home to countless veterans is itself in need of rescue.

With several of the majestic, post-Civil War era buildings in imminent danger of collapse, the Soldiers Home historic district will be placed on the list of the most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation today.

“I think of this as the birthplace of veterans health care in America,” said Jim Duff, president of the Soldiers Home Foundation, who added that the home was one of three in the nation authorized by President Abraham Lincoln in the final days of the Civil War.

The 90-acre site, with its gracious, park-like grounds, a soldiers’ cemetery, a chapel and a theater, is the only Soldiers Home that remains intact, with its surrounding recuperative village still existing.

“The others exist in memory and memorabilia but not in the geography of the land,” said Duff of the other two homes in Togus, Maine, and Dayton, Ohio, where much of the grounds are long gone.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs owns the property, which includes 25 buildings and is part of the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center campus.

“They (the VA) have allowed these buildings to deteriorate,” said David Brown, chief preservation officer with the National Trust. “We are in a time when we are asking a lot of our military and this is a place that has been in existence for well over 100 years to serve the needs of the people who have served our country.”

A number of prominent buildings are in particular danger.

The mansard roof of Old Main, the original veterans residence atop a hill that now overlooks Miller Park, collapsed during a February snowstorm, leaving a gaping hole and the structure exposed to the elements, Duff said. Veterans lived and recuperated in Old Main for more than a century, until the mid-1970s .

Ward Memorial Hall, Wisconsin’s oldest theater, designed by City Hall architect Henry C. Koch, is shuttered and also suffering from roof collapse and water infiltration. Bob Hope, George Burns, W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Jim Durante once performed at the Ward, according to newspaper archives.

To be named to the National Trust’s list, a site must be historically significant and urgently at risk of destruction or irreparable damage. Realistic solutions for restoration must also be on the table.

The Soldiers Home Foundation wants to secure long-term lease agreements from the VA on some of the prominent buildings. The group is currently negotiating what they hope will be a 50-year lease on the 1889 Home Chapel at little to no cost in exchange for doing the restoration work, estimated to be $6.2 million, Duff said.

The expansive Queen Anne chapel, with a steeply pitched shingled roof, stands vigil beside Wood Cemetery. The wood frame building is structurally sound but has been shuttered for years. Once restored, it could be used for events, including memorials and weddings, which could bring in some revenue, Duff said.

The attention from the National Trust may move negotiations with the VA along and help with the group’s fundraising efforts, Brown said. The hope is that a restoration of the chapel would serve as a model and open the door for other projects, he said.

Some of the other buildings will require much more work, however. It could cost more than $100 million for a full and faithful restoration of Old Main, for instance, Duff said.

There is $2 million and additional tax credits and incentives included for the Soldiers Home building program included in the 2011-’13 state budget, expected to be voted on in the next few days. The overall package could result in a $6 million infusion of funds.

It’s been a while since plans for development or restoration of the Soldiers Home have been discussed. After years of sometimes emotional debate, plans to preserve some of the buildings as part of a larger project for a high-tech business park on the Zablocki campus were dropped in 2007.

Under that city plan, Old Main and another building would have been converted into apartments for elderly veterans and the theater would have been restored and turned into a museum. Opposition from veterans groups, who wanted to keep the grounds intact, particularly close to the soldiers' cemetery, killed the proposal, city officials said at the time.

The Soldiers Home was one of the first racially integrated federal programs, if not the first, a place where white and black Civil War veterans lived together many years before the armed forces were themselves desegregated, according to newspaper archives.

The idea for the Soldiers Home system can be traced back to a women’s movement in Wisconsin. Tired of seeing the state’s veterans living on the streets, the women raised $100,000 in 10 days in order to buy the Soldiers Home property, said Mary Panzer, vice president of the Soldiers Home Foundation.

The home is one of 11 sites on this year’s list of endangered places, in existence for more than 20 years. It was nominated by the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance. The only other site in Wisconsin that’s ever made the list was Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, in 1994.

“This just highlights again the importance of this property in our midst,” said Jim Duff. “It is a place that a lot of people in Milwaukee never go to if they are not a veteran. It’s like a secret place.”

Images from top: Old Main, the original soldiers' home, and its caved-in roof and a detail of a window exterior. The chapel and theater at the Soldiers Home. All by Journal Sentinel photographer Mike De Sisti. Final image, an interior of the theater, currently not accessible, taken in 2004, from the Journal Sentinel archives.